Elder Tyler Jones week 60

I'm glad things are going well with you guys, and neat to hear about Mom's experience with the Burmese family.

We had a pretty good week. We taught a man that came to church and we were teaching him about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He came to church and felt good going there. As we were teaching him about baptism, before we invited him to do anything he said that baptism sounds really great and that he wants to do it. So he's preparing to get baptized on the 23rd. So that's pretty exciting.

Our ward mission leader didn't end up being able to come to church this week. At his work they told him to just finish cleaning the floor and then he could go to church. But then that apparently took forever and the other workers didn't know what they were doing so he had to do a bunch of things for them and so he wasn't able to leave work. He's sort of the ring leader for a couple of less active and part member families. So we didn't have as many people at church this week.

We're teaching a really cool family. They're a younger couple but they have two young kids. They're super cute. We ended teaching them pretty frequently. They had been investigating a while ago. The husband at one point was preparing to be baptized but his wife had some worries about he Book of Mormon and the church so they didn't follow through with it. But we've been teaching them and reading the Book of Mormon with them. They're reading on their own now as well! We had some members come with us to our lessons and it went super well. We asked the wife how she feels about the Book of Mormon now and she gave the sweetest testimony of the Book of Mormon and she's pretty excited to come to church. She's only able to come once a month because of her work schedule but we're really excited for them.

The branch here is awesome. The San Benito branch is like a cute little family and all of he members are just awesome. It was my companion's birthday this week and they had a little surprise party for him. So that was super awesome of them. So I'm really happy to be here in this branch.

I'm doing great!

I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones and Elder Dalley

Elder Tyler Jones week 59

Sounds like you guys are doing well. I'm glad your babies are being good. We didn't go to see the eclipse either. Some elders went to go see it but their car got towed. It sounds like you guys are having some good times. That's crazy to hear about grandmas car. Wow I didn't know you guys had peach trees. Sounds like you're having a good harvest.

It's been a good week for us. I got here to Hollister. Hollister is pretty awesome. It's a relatively small farming town. Most members live inside of town but a few live far out into the fields. So it's a pretty cool area. There isn't traffic here, like there was in Menlo Park, which is really nice.

The members here are great. We have some recent converts that are really nice. The branch is relatively tiny. There's between 30 and 50 people that attend sacrament meeting. They're all pretty awesome. The ward mission leader here is pretty cool. He had been sort of wish washy before apparently, but we passed by this week and we talked to him. He seems pretty excited about missionary work now. We talked to him about the branch baptismal goal and he got really excited for that, he ended up bringing a bunch of people to church. He started lining up appointments with investigators for us and all that. So he's pretty awesome. He brought up the branch attendance to he highest it's been for a while.

We also had a meeting with our branch president. He's a pretty cool guy too. He's an orthodontist and he's pretty excited about getting back on track with missionary work as well. He doesn't have a lot of priesthood support in the ward so that makes it hard for him, he's also running his own business so he's a very busy guy. But it seems like he's holding things together well.

Elder Dalley is my new companion. He just finished his training. So he's really awesome and has a lot of fire for doing work. He's from Idaho and he's really awesome. I'm really happy to be serving with him.

We have a really really nice apartment. It's maybe the nicest missionary apartment I've seen so far, pretty spacious and has its own washer and dryer inside of the apartment. So we don't have to go try to use coin laundry anymore. That's been really nice.

We've found some pretty cool investigators this week. We're teaching this young couple. They have two really cute sons that are about one and three years old. The one year old likes to dance a lot. But they're a cool family. They had come to our church a long time ago b said they'd be interested in learning more again. 

We also found this family that is pretty cool. They have a son that has cancer and also got into a really bad car accident about a year ago. He was apparently in really bad condition but some elders went over and gave the son a blessing and he's doing a lot better. The dad is pretty much already convinced about the priesthood and that this is the true church. It's just the mom is more hesitant. Also, they might be getting divorced soon which complicates things. 

So it's been an awesome week!

I hope you guys have a great week!

Javier Baptism

Elder Tyler Jones week 58

We had a great week. Javier got baptized. Here's the little blurb that we sent to president for the baptismal report:

Javier was found by the sister missionaries while contacting.they
referred him to us and we began to teach. From the beginning he was
interested and enthusiastic about the gospel, but he took particular
interest in the Book of Mormon. We gave him a copy and he started to
read right away. He felt the spirit telling him that it was true and
he gained a powerful testimony of the restoration and committed to be
baptized right away. The ward members did a lot to fellowship Javier
and made him feel right at home. Despite his struggles with his broken
foot, he put in the effort to come to church every week and even go to
the temple with us. He had a great experience at his baptism with a
lot of support from the ward. He's now excited to keep progressing and
to go to the temple again to be baptized for his parents. This Sunday
we asked him how he feels now after being baptized. He told us that he
feels great and that he just wants to do whatever he can to serve god.

So yeah we had an awesome experience with Javier. The ward did an awesome job of showing up for his baptism and it was really awesome. The relief society is goi to bring him food while he's on unemployment and a member is getting him a white shirt and tie. So that's really awesome. During the service I had to get in the water with them since Hno. Clemente has a bad arm and Javier has the broken foot. The first time Hno. Clemente tried to do it on his own but he couldn't get him under all the way. So I helped him the second time and his hair was still above the water. So we ended up doing it three times. But Javier was laughing by the third time so it was good.

I'm getting transferred to a small town called hollister. It's a small Spanish branch in a little farming community. So I'm pretty excited for that. I'll be leaving tommorow.

Anyway, im having a great time!

Sitting at google headquarters, visiting temple

Elder Tyler Jones week 57

It's been a good week for us,

Javier is still ready to get baptized on Saturday! So we're super excited for that! He has his baptismal interview tomorrow and we've already gone through all of that with him. So now we're just trying to get his baptism all organized. But he seems really excited. We need to get a bag to put over his cast while he's getting baptized but we're just going to get a bag from CVS or something like that. Also, Hno. Clemente is going to be baptizing Javier! Hno Clemente is a recent convert that's super awesome and is about to go to the temple to be sealed to his wife. So that's going to be super awesome!

We had a temple trip yesterday. We brought Javier, Douglas and his girlfriend, Juan Carlos (The sister's investigator), and Hno Bojorquez and his wife (the first counselor). That was super awesome. We took up 2 cars with Juan carlos going with the bojorquezs to the temple and we went with Javier in Douglas's car. We got there and went into the visitors center and there was all sorts of presentations and things for them to see. it seemed like they really liked it. Then we just walked around the temple which they seemed to like as well. there's also a beautiful view of the bay from the Oakland temple so that was nice to see. Ill send some pictures of that trip.

Douglas is doing well also. He's had a hard time meeting with us because of his work schedule but it's starting to clear up so he's been able to talk with us. He wants to get baptized he just needs to get married to his girlfriend first. So they really enjoyed the temple trip and were able to talk to Hno. Bojorquez about trying to get married. So things are going well with them.

Also, we had a big multicultural night this week as well. It was between our ward, the English ward and the Tongan ward. It was pretty cool. They had a lot of interesting performances and whatnot. Some investigators were able to come as well so that was pretty great.

So things are going well for us here!

I hope you have a great week!